Exclusive | Meta to Pay $25 Million to Settle 2021 Trump Lawsuit – WSJ
Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump. The lawsuit accused the company of censoring his social media accounts after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Meta’s lawyers confirmed the settlement in a letter to the court on January 30, 2025.
As part of the agreement, Meta will donate $22 million to Trump’s presidential library and cover $3 million in legal fees. The lawsuit, filed in July 2021, claimed that Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg unfairly banned Trump’s accounts and worked with Democratic lawmakers to silence him. Trump argued that the platform wrongly enforced its “Community Standards” to block his posts.
Zuckerberg has recently taken steps to improve his relationship with Trump. He attended Trump’s inauguration earlier this month and visited Mar-a-Lago several times. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s campaign, ended its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and changed its fact-checking policy.
In a conversation with Joe Rogan, Zuckerberg admitted that Meta’s fact-checking program had created distrust, especially in the U.S. He explained that the company decided to shut it down to regain public confidence.
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